The Standard Comprehensive Family Model in Islamic Ideology

Given the importance of family in Islamic civilization and the unique role of this holy institution in transferring culture and beliefs to generations, development of the desired model of a standard Islamic family could be a great step towards the growth and evolution of the society. Unfortunately, a review of the literature in the field of Islamic family reveals that no such a model exists.  Lack of such a model causes the Islamic community not to be familiar with the Islamic teachings and, in practice, imposes limitations on the cultural policy makers and planners. In this study, the texts of 7 Islamic books (including 21 volumes) on family were analyzed inductively through qualitative content analysis. The books were selected in such a way that the topic in question could be evaluated from such angles as ‘the life story of the infallible Imams (a.s.)’, ‘religious hadiths’ and ‘the opinions of Islamic scholars’. The result of the open coding was extraction of 725 relevant codes which were classified into 93 concepts and 11 categories, and, ultimately, the standard comprehensive Islamic model of family with these three pivot points: ‘theoretical perspectives of Islam toward family’, ‘practical ways of consolidating family’, and ‘destabilizing factors of family’ was developed. Each one of these pivot points comprises a number of sub-divisions. The first one includes ‘the relationship between family and society’, ‘the desired features of family environment’, ‘Islamic views about family formation’ and ‘Islamic views about couples’. The second one includes ‘family formation’, ‘family economy’ and ‘practical ways of consolidating family”. And the third one consists of ‘family formation barriers’, ‘family destabilizing factors after marriage’ and ‘duties of others in case the couple gets into dispute’.